Tweaking the Rane MLM-82

The Rane MLM-82 is quite possibly the perfect rack mixer for this application. It has four mono mic/line inputs, plus four stereo line inputs, all in one rack space. It's clean and quiet, what can I say? I'm a big fan of Rane gear.

The newer models (the MLM-82a) has front panel switches which allow you to assign the mic inputs to left, right, or center. Unfortunately, I have one of the older models. The good news is that there's an easy mod which allows you to semi-permanently assign the mic inputs to only one channel. The description of the mod and the schematic are both available from the Rane website. It's a very easy mod. The signal from the mono mic channels, at the end of the chain, goes through two resistors to get mixed onto the final L and R mix outputs. By clipping one of these resistors, you effectively pan the channel over to the un-clipped side. I supose you could tinker with various resistor value to pan partway, but for this application hard panning is what you want. Simply clip two resistors (one for each channel) and the mod looks something like this:



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